It was Thanksgiving here in Canada last weekend. Being a huge fan of local food, our family contributed a roasted squash soup to the occasion, made entirely from local ingredients, sourced within 100 miles of home.

My inspiration for this is, among other things, The 100 Mile Diet, at The Tyee, British Columbia’s online newspaper and perhaps the finest example of online major media I have ever read. The series, which has been running since the spring has charted the lives of James MacKinnon and Alicia Smith as they try to eat exclusively foods grown within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver. As they have tried (and succeeded) to do this they have discovered some interesting realities about the way food is produced in this country and what it means for our diet, our economy and our society.

Caitlin had another zinger last night while watching The Return of the King:

Orc leader: The time of man is over! The time of the orcs has begun!
Caitlin: What are they going to do with all that time? Open cafes?

And the plot came crumbling down…!

Is this not the coolest thing? The Open Space Sangha has come alive.

A little less than four years ago I started what I think was the first Open Space weblog which folded into this one. Since then a fair dozen or so have cropped up and now our little community has gathered in the Sangha to reflect deeply on the practices of Open Space.

Props to Wendy for getting the ball rolling. She’s a great person to work with!

Fitfully tracing portals for five years, wood s lot celebrates a birthday.

I love Mark Wood’s weblog. It was one of my first bloggy reads and I continue to read it several times a week, finding myself taken far away by his amazing collection of links and findings. Unfortunately, he hand rolls the blog and has never produced an RSS feed of any quality, so he doesn’t show up in my links roll, which is powered by Bloglines. But he’s always been generous with sending traffic my way, and I’ve appreciated that and the occasional email exchange we have had over the years, so here’s a shout out to Mark and a great big thank you for the continuing education in cultural studies that unfurls from the garage on the river in Perth, Ontario.

If you’ve never heard Metis music before, you should go over to metisradio.fm and tune in. This is a good quality 64kb stream of traditional and contemporary Metis music.

Metis music is predominantly a fiddle genre, springing out of the traditional cultures of the French and Scottish traders that went west and married First Nations women. As the Metis Nation arose in the 18th and 19th centuries, so did the music, becoming a unique genre of fiddling, although borrowing many tunes and styles from Celtic, French, Old Time and, more recently, country music.

Saying that Metis music is just fiddle music doesn’t do it justice though. Traditional influences still pervade the music and hand drumming, singing and chanting are still a part of the Metis music world. It is perhaps the most diverse single genre of traditional North American music.

One of the real treasures of this site is the collection of recordings from the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation in North Dakota, which is a strong home of the American parts of the Metis Nation. These recordings are astounding quality and give an amazing overview of this diversity and range of music produced out of the French, Scottish and Chippewa traditions.

Bonus stream: Aboriginal Voices Radio Canada’s national Aboriginal broadcaster, broadcasting in Toronto on 106.5fm and across the web.